• Yahoo/AP, Tuesday, May 11, 2010 9:50 PM

Dish CEO Charlie Ergen is prepared to shut down the DVRs if a court sides with TiVo in a patent-infringement case. The alternative is to pay TiVo, a pioneer in DVR technology, licensing fees. Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett said that 7.3 million DVRs could be affected and that the cost to replace and shut down the boxes could run close to $3 billion.

Moffett noted that $3 billion is significant given Dish's market value of $10 billion. He also said that Dish could lose millions of customers in weeks if the DVRs were disabled. TiVo sued Dish in 2004 for infringement of its real-time TV pausing and rewinding features. A three-judge federal appeals panel sided with TiVo. Dish, the nation's asked the court to review the case, but acknowledges one is unlikely. Moffett doesn't believe Dish will agree to pay TiVo "modest monthly fees" of $2 to $3 per subscriber to settle the case.

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